About

Deluxe V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary

$116,706

pledged of $40,000 goal

1,118

backers

Jyhad.

It’s ever been a loaded word among vampires. Jyhad is in force everywhere from lofty, perfumed Elysium to cloying, smoke-filled blood feasts. Jyhad’s the eternal game played by elders, Methuselahs, and worse — it’s the agenda of beings so utterly beyond humanity, one such as yourself could scarcely understand its movements.

Luckily for you, you’ve picked up a copy of my diary. With my help you may just take a step on the first rung of understanding. Information worth having is information you must earn through blood, and oh, how I’ve bled for what’s contained within these pages.

--Beckett

The Kindred are a race bound by blood and lineage, flowing back to the dawn of time and Caine, the First Murderer. The Clans descend from the Antediluvians, ancient vampires whose childer vie for power in a midnight struggle, using their own childer in turn as pawns in a game the world over. That game has a name, whispered by some, denied by others, and dreaded by all: the Jyhad.

Beckett's Jyhad Diary is the written account of our skeptical Gangrel protagonist, as he travels through domains far and wide, embroils himself in the many plots of elders and neonates alike, and explores the mysteries of Vampire’s setting both wondrous and terrible. Scribbled in the margins are the notes of Anatole, Lucita, and Aisling Sturbridge - friends and erstwhile allies of our intrepid archaeologist, commenting on his journeys.

Over the years, the plot of Vampire: the Masquerade provided a rich tapestry for Storytellers to use in their games. Onyx Path Publishing wanted to bring that tapestry to your table, and give a new generation of Storytellers the tools to weave that tapestry as they saw fit.

Beckett’s Jyhad Diary gives you canonical hooks and plot lines from the 1st, 2nd, Revised and 20th Anniversary Editions of Vampire, as well as Vampire: the Eternal Struggle and the Clan Novels series, both Dark Ages and Modern. We constructed those hooks as flashpoints - discrete events in the Jyhad that Beckett witnesses, comments on, and investigates, so that player characters and Storytellers can engage on a level that works for their home plot.

Masterfully written by the likes of Neall Raemonn Price, Joshua Alan Doetsch, Matthew McFarland, Myranda Sarro, Steffie de Vaan, Malcolm Sheppard, Alan Alexander, Renee Knipe, and Matthew Dawkins, Beckett's Jyhad Diary is as fascinating to read as to use for your game Chronicles.

Don't take our word for it, here are selected chapters of the finished manuscript to inflame your imaginations and entice your interest:

V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary is slated to come out in digital and print-on-demand versions, but this Kickstarter is for a luxurious, deluxe edition of the book designed to look like just the sort of 7" x 10" traveling diary Beckett would carry through his journeys, with an elastic band to hold the volume closed, a silk bookmark, and full color interior currently estimated at 200+ pages.

Initial cover design mock-up, not the finished book

But we won’t stop there. We'll be offering focused stretch goals that specifically expand the book beyond its original design and enhance it in different ways. There will be new opportunities with the stretch goals for backers to make their mark on the book, continuing a tradition of open development and coordination with our community that we value and appreciate.

It's pretty easy. Contribute any amount you want, bearing in mind the levels of contribution and their commensurate rewards over there on the right. If we hit our $40K goal, you'll get the reward that goes with your level of contribution. PDFs and Print on Demand versions will be made available first in the form of a coupon from our online sales partner, DriveThruRPG.com.

Deluxe V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary will take multiple months from the closing date to print and ship. PDF Rewards and Add-ons will not take as long as the Deluxe, but will come after the BackerKit Surveys are returned after this KS closes. We will contact contributors in the upper tiers with details on their rewards.

You can Add-on the PDFs listed below to any Reward Tier pledge that already includes a V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary PDF by clicking on your Reward Tier to the right, and then when you get to the pledge page that confirms your pledge amount, manually changing the amount of your pledge from the base Reward amount to that Reward amount plus the amount of each Add-on that you want as listed below :

+ $10 for the classic Year of the Scarab, Gehenna Novels, and Victorian Vampire fiction trilogies PDFs.

+ $15 for an additional V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary PDF.

+ $35 for the classic Book of Nod, Erciyes Fragments, Revelations of the Dark Mother, and Encyclopedia Vampirica PDFs.

+ $70 for the classic four Transylvania Chronicles, Time of Thin Blood, Nights of Prophecy, and Children of the Night PDFs.

+ $90 for the fourteen Onyx Path V20 PDFs listed in the Reward Tiers to the right.

Important: the above classic PDFs were created using the best methods possible depending on available files stretching 25 years back. Therefore, the image quality of PDFs of the older books in particular may not be as good as PDFs for newer books.

You can also add on individual physical copies of the Deluxe V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary book to any pledge that already is shipping a physical book by manually adding the appropriate amount on the pledge page:

+ $80 for a Deluxe V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary (US)

+ $95 for a Deluxe V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary (Canada and EU)

+ $110 for a Deluxe V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary (Everywhere Else)

You can add on the V20 Lore of the Clans Storyteller's Screen to any reward tier that offers a physical book:

+ $15 for the V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary Storyteller's Screen, a sturdy three-panel screen featuring the beautiful collage of V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary art on the outer side, and on the inside there's a selection of charts and other info to make the Storyteller's job a little bit easier.

You can add on the Deluxe Vampire 20th Dice Set to any reward tier that offers a physical book:

+ $23 for the Deluxe Vampire 20th Dice Set, ten 10-sided dice designed with the V20 thorn motif featuring the V20 Ankh created in cooperation with Q-Workshop.

Here's the latest mockup of the dice design:

You must type in the correct amount calculated by adding the base Reward amount and the Add-ons you want. It does not happen automatically.

At $45,000, we'll create a limited-run t-shirt available at-cost via our RedBubble store. It will be available for a limited time, after which the design will be changed.

At $60,000, we'll be adding a whole new chapter, as Beckett traces the remainder of the Cappadocian Clan in Egypt.

At $70,000, you voted to add a second new chapter, featuring the legacy of the Salubri.

At $75,000, we'll add a third new chapter, featuring Lucita and the Black Hand.

At $78,000, we'll add a second wave of full-color art, making the Diary an even more lavish production.

At $83,000, you selected our fourth new chapter, featuring the legacy of Carthage and Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption star Christof.

At $88,000, we'll add a fifth new chapter, featuring the drowning of Rasputin!

At $96,000, we'll add the next new chapter, in which Beckett investigates his own shrouded past.

At $103,000, we'll add a third wave of gorgeous artwork.

At $110,000, we'll add Omega, our final new chapter.

And finally, at $117,500, we'll expand Omega to include lore from V20 Dark Ages and its supplements.

This is our twentieth Onyx Path Kickstarter, and we have learned enough (sometimes painfully) to make some tweaks to our goals, reward tiers, and prizes. One of those things is that we tend to get the same questions asked during each Kickstarter, but have a limit on the amount of text we can put on this KS page, so we're hosting a FAQ here:

Risks and challenges

Risk: This book isn't created at all even though the goal is reached.

Solution: We have successfully shipped twelve Kickstarter projects and several more are headed to completion as you read this. All those books have taught us how the various pieces of the process works, sometimes painfully, and we have increased our ability to judge the various stages of delivery better with each KS. The current text for Beckett's Jyhad Diary is completely finished, and we are going to carefully limit the amount of new text from Stretch Goals and Rewards.

Risk: Shipping costs soak up pledges that were meant to enable the creation of the Deluxe Beckett's Jyhad Diary.

Solution: Kickstarter shipping costs have continued to rise dramatically this last year, but we are aware of that and were able to find ways to work with shippers to bring down those costs - unfortunately, only to some extent as we have also needed to up the shipping charges- both methods allowing us to be sure that shipping doesn't eat up the pledge money supposed to go to printing. For the first time, because of Kickstarter adding the option to their tools, we are able to be more specific as to shipping costs based on your country. These costs will be added to your pledge automatically by KS if you are outside the US. As always, local or VAT style taxes will need to be paid by the backer when appropriate and are not included in these costs. And we are working with our shippers to ship from the EU and thus avoid those customs and handling fees we’ve previously had to pass on to our EU backers.

Risk: The books will take a long time to produce and anger the backers.

Solution: We've learned many, many lessons with our previous Kickstarters and we're becoming much better at estimating the various pitfalls that will delay a KS project. We were able to deliver the PDFs for several of our last KS projects several months before the estimate, and recent Kickstarters started shipping in the month or the month before we estimated. That being said, backers need to be aware that they are enabling a process, and not a pre-order opportunity, and things do sometimes run slower than we want or anticipate with that process. We've found that an open flow of communication between us and the backer community is vital so once the project funds we will deliver regular Updates on progress via Kickstarter as well as in our regular, weekly, Monday Meeting Notes blog at www.theonyxpath.com

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $60 or more
About $60

The Trail of Beckett

You'll receive:

• PDF copies of all four Transylvania Chronicles game books, the Time of Thin Blood game book, the Nights of Prophecy game book, and the Children of the Night game book, which all feature Beckett in some capacity - even if only on the cover of Children of the Night.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $75 or more
About $75

The Trail of Beckett Researcher

You'll receive:

• A copy of the V20 Beckett's Vampire Diary PDF.

• PDF copies of all four Transylvania Chronicles game books, the Time of Thin Blood game book, the Nights of Prophecy game book, and the Children of the Night game book, which all feature Beckett in some capacity - even if only on the cover of Children of the Night.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $90 or more
About $90

The Trail of Beckett Researcher

You'll receive:

• A copy of the V20 Beckett's Vampire Diary PDF.

• PDF copies of all four Transylvania Chronicles game books, the Time of Thin Blood game book, the Nights of Prophecy game book, and the Children of the Night game book, which all feature Beckett in some capacity - even if only on the cover of Children of the Night.

• The V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary Storyteller's Screen, a sturdy three-panel screen featuring a collage of the stunning art from the book on the outer side, and on the inside there's a selection of charts and other info to make the Storyteller's job a little bit easier.

• You or your character's name will be listed on the credits page as a Jyhad Diarist.

There will be an extra shipping charge added automatically to nonUS pledges.

• The V20 Beckett's Jyhad Diary Storyteller's Screen, a sturdy three-panel screen featuring a collage of the stunning art from the book on the outer side, and on the inside there's a selection of charts and other info to make the Storyteller's job a little bit easier.

• The Deluxe Vampire 20th Dice Set, ten 10-sided dice designed with the V20 thorn motif featuring the V20 Ankh created in cooperation with Q-Workshop.

• You or your character's name will be listed on the credits page as a Jyhad Diarist.

There will be an extra shipping charge added automatically to nonUS pledges.

• PDF copies of the Year of the Scarab fiction trilogy, the Time of Judgment fiction trilogy, and the Victorian Vampire fiction trilogy, as these three trilogies all feature Beckett as a character.

• PDF copies of the Book of Nod, the Erciyes Fragments, Revelations of the Dark Mother and the Encyclopedia Vampirica, to search through for the hidden mysteries of vampiric legend.

• PDF copies of all four Transylvania Chronicles game books, the Time of Thin Blood game book, the Nights of Prophecy game book, and the Children of the Night game book, which all feature Beckett in some capacity - even if only on the cover of Children of the Night.

• You or your character's name will be listed on the credits page as a Jyhad Diarist.

There will be an extra shipping charge added automatically to nonUS pledges.